Projects

Current Projects

Colorado Tech Weekly
When I decided that I wanted to again pursue my dream of being a software developer, I didn’t want to go into it blindly. I wanted to make sure I knew about the Colorado tech industry so that when I had the skills to get a job I knew where I wanted to go. I knew I wouldn’t be the only one interested in this news, so I started Colorado Tech Weekly.

Past Projects

Author Assistant for Marie Trout for “The Blues – Why It Still Hurts So Good”In October of 2013 I set out on Elance.com (now Upwork.com) to make a few extra bucks. I was lucky enough to find Marie Trout who needed someone to transcribe recorded interviews for her thesis. Since my full time job as a 911 dispatcher requires me to listen, understand, and type quickly, my skills were perfect for the job! After completing her Doctorate, she decided to turn her research into a book “The Blues – Why It Still Hurts So Good” which is now on sale through Amazon in paperback and as a Kindle e-book.

Trespass Notice Web App
The police department I work for uses 3 binders to keep track of Trespass Notices for addresses throughout the city. To find out if someone has been trespassed from an address, officers must ask dispatch, then the dispatcher must step away from their position to open and leaf through the Trespass Notice Binder. This is an issue that was begging to be fixed by a simple web application.

Colorado Tech Weekly Podcast
The podcast was a supplement to the Colorado Tech Weekly blog series. Each Monday afternoon I recorded a Colorado Tech Weekly podcast episode and used the Monday morning post as my show notes. It last ed for about 10 weeks.

Streamlining Police Officer Paperwork with Word and Visual Basic
I work as a police dispatcher for a small department in the Denver, Colorado metro area. When I heard that officers were annoyed with some of the duplication they encountered when doing paperwork I started looking into their process to see if there was a way I could help. Officers are required to submit a “Statement in Support of Warrantless Arrest” (Warrantless Arrest) and a “Determination of Probable Cause” (PC) to the courts when arresting someone on new charges. Much of the same information on the Warrantless Arrest such as the subject’s name, the subject’s date of birth, date and time of arrest and crimes charged, etc. are also required on the PC. I wanted to find a way to allow officers to only enter that information once.

Follow Sweeper
Twitter has a crazy rule that unless your follower:following ratio is over some super secret ratio then you can’t follow more than 2000 people. I was at that limit, so I was unable to follow new people. I knew that there were some Twitter accounts that I was following that were inactive, but there is no easy way to find which accounts were inactive, so Follow Sweeper was created.

Mortensen Elementary Code.org Program
In 2013, I started volunteering as the computer lab monitor for Mortensen Elementary after school. The school likes having me there because of my computer science background, so I’m going to make use of that background to teach kids how to code.

Dev News Weekly
In 2014, I started Dev News Weekly to supplement my main news series Colorado Tech Weekly. When I started Colorado Tech Weekly I had not found many local news sources so I included stories about stories outside of Colorado that were interesting to me as a developer. As I learned more about the Colorado technology community and found more stories, I was unable to include the national stories. Dev News Weekly was a way for me to share the national news that I found interesting.

Hour of Hardware – Elementary Education Event on 4/1/14Last fall my daughter’s elementary school hosted an Hour of Code event that was organized by Code.org. I volunteered to help and had a blast helping the kids work through the tutorials. I wanted to encourage the students to learn about computer science in general, not code specifically, so I came up with the idea of an Hour of Hardware.

Learning UX – ScottPantall.com Website Design
The purpose of scottpantall.com is to give myself a live environment to experiment with web-based technologies. It will also be a resource for anyone who is interested in my professional achievements and goals. The site is built on a WordPress CMS which will allow me to re-familiarize myself with PHP and CSS.

BlueSpruceInventory.com Website Design
From 2010-2012 I operated a home inventory service that would document all of a client’s belongings so they would have the necessary information if they need to file a theft report or an insurance claim. BlueSpruceInventory.com was my primary means of organizing my marketing stragegy. The website was built on the WordPress CMS and was customized using PHP and CSS.

Home Inventory Database Design for Blue Spruce InventoryFrom 2010-2012 I operated a home inventory service that would document all of a client’s belongings so they would have the necessary information if they need to file a theft report or an insurance claim. In order to quickly and accurately document and categorize a client’s belongings, I created a Microsoft Access database that allowed for quick entry of information. The database created custom, easy-to-read reports for clients and a text file to allow information to be uploaded to a client’s KnowYourStuff.org account.